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On the Canadian road to a national press council: Public Editor

As a battle royal plays out in Britain over the future of press accountability, Canada’s newspaper industry is taking slow and cautious steps toward the overhaul of this country’s “broken” system of self-regulation.

At its annual conference in Ottawa last week, Newspapers Canada, which represents more than 800 daily and community newspapers, decided to pursue a proposal put forward by the Ontario Press Council to create a voluntary national press council.

This being Canada, the plan calls for a national council with strong provincial representation, Don McCurdy, executive director of the Ontario council, told me early this week.

A national body for independent media self-regulation makes great sense given strong evidence that some of the regional press councils in Canada are floundering and have become largely insignificant to readers. This idea of a national council has been kicking around for a few years now. I expect there is a long road ahead to making it a reality.

But it is unlikely Canada will see the level of divisive debate about press self-regulation now underway in Britain, where much of the newspaper industry is pushing back against the government’s plan for a “tough, independent, self-regulation” system to be set up under a royal charter.

There, the proposed new body called for in the wake of the Leveson inquiry into press ethics that followed revelations of phone-hacking at Rupert Murdoch’s now-defunct News of the World would have power to impose fines on publishers and order them to publish apologies.

Those drastic measures are neither called for nor necessary here. I’ve always been happy to report that as far as I know there are no such serious ethical breaches as phone-hacking in Canadian journalism and certainly no need for any level of government intervention in the press. But Canadian readers do still require a robust and effective means of holding the press to account. You should expect nothing less.

Canada now has a patchwork system of regional press self-regulation, with five press councils — in the Atlantic region, Quebec, Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia. In recent years, many news organizations have abandoned membership in those councils. Manitoba’s press council shut down in 2011.

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“It seems clear that the current national framework for journalistic self-regulation and self-managed accountability is broken in many respects,” a comprehensive research report commissioned by Newspapers Canada concluded.

While the “Ryerson report” did not recommend the creation of a national press council, but rather presented the pros and cons of a national body, it did see the need for some action by the Canadian news industry to be more accountable and transparent about its ethics and professional standards.

“Clearly the time has come for Canadians either to accept that the country’s system of media self-assessment is neither comprehensive, nor consistently effective, or for steps to be taken to reform the system,” it stated.

In response to that report, following months of debate and discussion among its public and industry members, the Ontario council decided to throw its “somewhat conditional” support behind a national press council.

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“This country needs a press council in every area,” McCurdy told me. “The provincial model worked for a long time but it is time to move forward.”

A national model is in line with the reality of the news business today. As McCurdy points out, many regional news organizations now have national scope given the reality that digital journalism has no geographic borders and news organizations operate across this nation.

The Ontario proposal doesn’t discount the importance of Canada’s regions. It calls for “true regional representation” of members on a national council as well as regional panels to hear complaints from aggrieved readers within any given area.

Working with Newspapers Canada, the OPC will lead the charge to create a national council, with much of the work ahead likely falling to McCurdy and a few others. At this point, it’s unclear how much support exists outside Ontario. Early indications are that neither B.C. nor Quebec is yet on board.

“All the press councils will have to work together if we are going to make this happen,” McCurdy said. “It will take time to build a coalition.”

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